Quick Hits: Perez, Pineda, Mariners, Ramirez, A’s

As MLBTR's Tim Dierkes explained yesterday in looking at NL West out-of-options players, the Diamondbacks already have a seeming logjam in the bullpen. Nevertheless, the team agreed to a two-year deal today with southpaw Oliver Perez. That may be a reflection of the team's view of fellow lefty Joe Thatcher, tweets Troy Renck of the Denver Post. Indeed, manager Kirk Gibson had said earlier today that the club would not carry a left-handed reliever if none warranted a roster spot, Zach Buchanan of AZCentral.com reports. "You've got to have people that can command the zone," Gibson said, possibly an oblique reference to the control issues last year of Thatcher and Tony Sipp. Thatcher was the only MLB piece that came to Arizona in the Ian Kennedytrade, and recently agreed to a $2.375MM deal to avoid arbitration. The 32-year-old has a solid track record, but struggled in his 22 appearances upon joining the D'backs. Now, with Perez in line for a pen slot and Randall Delgado likely headed the same way, Thatcher or another established arm may be without a role.

Yankees starter Michael Pineda took an important step tonight on the road back from shoulder surgery, writes Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News. Throwing a slider that catcher Brian McCann called "pretty much unhittable," Pineda tossed two scoreless innings and struck out four Tigers — including Austin Jackson, Rajai Davis, and reigning AL MVP Miguel Cabrera. Needless to say, an effective Pineda would be a major boon to a New York club with questions at the back of the rotation (to say nothing of the future implications). The 25-year-old Pineda enters the year with 2.099 years of service, much of it accrued on the DL over the last two years.

Meanwhile, the Mariners — the club that dealt Pineda to New York — are looking closely at several non-roster invitees for Opening Day slots, writes MLB.com's Greg Johns. Starter Randy Wolf has had poor results, but says he is progressing. And southpaw reliever Joe Beimel is making a surprising run at a pen role, despite not having appeared in the bigs since 2011. Manager Lloyd McClendon preached patience with Wolf but lavished praise on Beimel, saying that the 36-year-old has "looked great" and "has the ability to get guys out from both sides of the plate."

Irrepressible former superstar Manny Ramirez says he still wants to play, reports Enrique Rojas of ESPNDeportes.com. The 41-year-old has not been able to earn a call-up over the last two seasons, but says he is waiting for an MLB opportunity and has so far declined requests for a repeat of his successful stint in Taiwan. MLBTR's Zach Links recently reported that Ramirez had changed agents, seemingly an indication that Ramirez was serious about continuing his career.

As the Athletics continue to work through their difficult stadium situation, co-owner Lew Wolff says the team is considering all methods for dealing with a stalemate in lease negotiations, reports Joe Stiglich of CSNBayArea.com. "I am hopeful of expanding our lease at the Oakland Coliseum for an extended term," Wolff recently wrote. "If we cannot accomplish a lease extension, I hope to have an interim place to play in the Bay Area or in the area that reaches our television and radio fans — either an existing venue or in the erection of a temporary venue that we have asked our soccer stadium architect (360 Architecture) to explore." Needless to say, the notion of a temporary ballpark is intriguing, if somewhat frightening. Wolff took care to note that "looking outside the Bay Area and our media market is an undesirable option to ownership at this time."

It really is a pity. At this point I’d almost say they should look into relocating the franchise but I can’t exactly think of a logical place they would have an acceptable starting fanbase that wouldn’t also be opposed by a few other teams.

Not sure if anywhere else is better. If they can move down to San Jose, maybe they can tap into the money there. The bay area has a ton of opportunities, and I don’t really see any other large cities supporting 2 teams. That puts them down to Charlotte/Raleigh/Austin/Portland level, and Austin/Raleigh have huge college sports concentrations. (Duke/Tar Heels/U Texas/etc), and Charlotte already has bobcats/panthers/huge Nascar. I don’t think leaving the bay area solves their problems.

Every time I think of a good location for the A’s to relocate then I can think of handful of better reasons why someone would complain or why the A’s would be worse off there. Really San Jose is their best hope.

Worse than Denver, might be a better market than KC size wise, but KC typically draws pretty bad. Bay area has about 8.4M people, whereas Portland/Salem area has 3M. The city could probably support a small market team, but I don’t think the A’s should tell themselves that moving to Portland would solve their problems.

What’s amazing about the Pineda / Montero deal is that even if Pineda never pitches a game the Yankees win the trade. Montero has been a net negative 0.2 WAR for the Mariners. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge a trade based on outcomes since the GMs have to make the deal based on information available at the time. But I cannot believe anyone looked at Montero and said “That there is a fine athlete.” I’m not happy he got injured, but boy if Pineda had been healthy this whole time Jack Z might not be the Mariners current GM.

I would still repeat the trade, even if he didn’t come back. Montero looked great, but if he couldn’t catch, which it looked like, then there was no room on the team if he could be a 1b/DH, unless he was Miggy good, Cash compared Jesus to him. Elite pitching is hard to find.

He is still very raw product, but is a wildcard. He showed enough where he should head to the FSL this year, they really kept in control of his innings last year after a lost 2012 season. It did keep him healthy, and he got a career high ip so maybe the keeping him at 4 or so innings a start worked. 110-120 ip is probably reasonable for him this year. If he can show he is healthy and he continues to grow he could be a big prospect in a year. Didn’t really care they gave away Noesi either at the time.

Looks very promising about Pineda. If he can take that #5 slot that is a very good rotation, and hopefully Gardner/Ellsbury can snag his flyball tendencies. I’d much rather be able to put Phelps in the bullpen.

If healthy, Pineda has #2 potential right behind Sabathia (yes, in front of Tanaka). At this point it seems like a long shot but that’s because you haven’t seen him pitch yet. I did, and teams hated facing Felix/Pineda in the same series. I hope he recovers fully — he’ll be great if so.

With a little bit of luck yesterdays outing by Pineda was just a very short preview of what the Yankees will be getting from Pineda over the next few weeks and months. Because of his injury in 2012 the Yankees just need to take it slow and easy with him right now there is no rush. Let the velocity come back over time and the Yankees could be looking at a starting rotation that will be the envy of most of the other MLB teams.

Regardless of what non Yankees fans would have us believe the rotation for 2014 is starting to shape up great with: CC / Kuroda / Tanaka / Nova and Pineda. Then come 2015 with CC / Tanaka / Nova / Pineda and Banuelos. With the exception of CC the oldest of the four in 2015 will be Nova at just 28 years old. The future of the Yankees starting rotation looks very, very bright.

It’s hard not to be optimistic about the pitching, but there are still a lot of questions. Pineda is promising but isn’t in the 5th spot just yet. Will we see the Nova of late last season, or the Nova who got off to a rough start? Then there is C.C.. he’ll almost guarantee to be at least as productive as last year. But will he regain his ace form?

Tanaka will be the biggest question mark. Kuroda to me is the least questionable. His season will be dictated on how well the Yankees use him. If they do this right, he should be able to last the whole season effectively.

As far as 2015 goes, Banuelos is not a given. He had tommy john in 2012 and started throwing late last year. He regained his velocity back to the 93-94, but still hasn’t made the jump to big league hitters.

For all the talk of how old these Yankees are, if Pineda can get back to being even 3/4s of what he used to be, he (25), Ivan Nova (27) and Masahiro Tanaka (25) could form the basis of a strong Yankee rotation for the next couple of seasons. And then there’s still Manny Banuelos who, despite losing a season and a half to Tommy John surgery. should start the season at AAA at age 22.

They have some young starting pitching talent and no starting pitching core is a sure thing. That being said none of those guys has proved to be Kershaw, Verlander or Hernandez. Tanaka should be a quality Major league starter and Nova has been somewhat underrated although their are question marks with both of them. Pineda and Banuelos, however exciting have a lot to prove. Let’s face it, lots of young pitchers have a higher chance of being relly good than Banuelos and Pineda. I can think of three or four on the other New York team that seem like better bets to succeed. Granted, they don’t have Kuroda and Sabathia. The Yankees should contend this year. Yet they do have question marks, more than the Cardinals for example.